Here's where Patriots ranked in every offensive category in 2022 in the NFL
BOSTON -- After losing Josh McDaniels and three other offensive assistants to the Raiders last offseason, Bill Belichick opted for a rather unique coaching setup in 2022.
It didn't work out too well.
With Matt Patricia moving to offense for the first time in 17 years, and with Joe Judge moving to offense for just the second season in his 11-year NFL coaching career, there was some well-founded skepticism that the Patriots were building an offensive coaching staff that would succeed in 2022 and build off Mac Jones' impressive rookie season. Those doubts were proven to have been a reasonable concern, as the Patriots' offense never really enjoyed any stretches of sustained success throughout the year.
With that in mind, and with the regular season now over, here's a look at where the Patriots ranked in just about every offensive category you can use to assess the potency or lack thereof from an offense. None of it should come as a surprise. (All rankings, of course, are out of 32 NFL teams.)
Yards per game: 26th, 314.6
Rush yards/game: 24th, 106.6
Rush yards/play: 21st, 4.24
Pass yards/game: 20th, 206.4
Pass yards/play: 15th, 6.60
First downs/game: 28th, 16.9Points per game*: 17th, 21.4
Pass touchdowns: tied-19th, 19
Rush touchdowns: tied-22nd, 12
Passer rating: 17th, 87.7Third down: 27th, 34.88%
Fourth down: 29th, 38.46%
Red zone: 32nd, 42.22%
Goal to go: 28th, 62.50%Average time of possession: 28th, 28:54
Average plays per drive: 29th
Average yards per drive: 27th
Average points per drive: 25th
Percentage of drives ending in score: 25th
*The overall scoring rank looks fine, but that number was boosted in a major way by eight non-offensive touchdowns (five INT returns, two fumble returns, one punt return). Those eight non-offensive touchdowns accounted for more than 20 percent of the team's overall touchdowns. In terms of offensive touchdowns, they ranked in the bottom five of the league.
The positives, if any even exist, are difficult to find.
Prior to the season, Belichick took full responsibility for the offensive coaching setup.
"If it doesn't go well," Belichick said in September, "blame me."
Well, ownership may do that and demand some answers about the thought process that went into this season's coaching staff. But from the outside, wagging a finger and say "I blame you" doesn't accomplish much.
That being said ... it's not as if the Patriots' offensive ineptitude wasn't foreseen by just about everybody.
In March at the scouting combine, one report indicated that people around the league were "flabbergasted at how this Patriots staff has come together." Considering the decades of cachet built up by Belichick, some analysts generously dubbed the situation a "dice roll" or a "gamble." When the offense looked abysmal during training camp, Belichick and Patricia dismissed the concerns, with everybody praising each other for the "collaborative process" at play in Foxboro. After preseason games, a smiling Belichick only admitted that the Patriots had "a process" without elaborating further.
"Don't worry about that," Belichick said after one preseason game. "We'll work it out."
After the first-team offense struggled for the whole preseason, Belichick downplayed the performance and even added that the first six weeks coming up in the regular season shouldn't be a concern, either.
"I don't think you really know where your team is until you get to about midseason, you know, mid-October," Belichick said at the end of August.
By midseason, players were openly talking in the locker room about opposing players knowing which plays were coming, and opposing defensive coordinators were accidentally making a mockery of the Patriots' play-calling. And at season's end, despite some strong bursts, the Patriots ultimately went 4-for-13 on third down, punted four times, and turned the ball over three times in a must-win game.
From Week 1 (271 total yards, 7 points, strip sack for opposing defensive touchdown) through Week 18, the Patriots' offense never really established much of anything.
That was mostly the expectation heading into the year, given the strange coaching setup. But Belichick has proven doubters wrong countless times over his highly successful tenure, so a caveat was always attached to any prognostication of doom. It looks bad, we would say, but maybe we'll end up being proven wrong. With the season now officially in the books, we know that we weren't wrong. It was just about as bad as could have been expected.